Wednesday, June 13, 2012

This one isn't painted. I bought a photo frame from a thrift store (op shops in Australia) and put a piece of black card in it- in place of a photo. We use those cool chalk pens to write on the glass. Simple!

Sunday, April 8, 2012

I started out incredibly enthusiastic about sanding my 70s style tv chairs. I'd read that hand sanding was best and so started out with a few different grades of sandpaper. That lasted about15 minutes! Sorry people but it was just too slow.

Sigh!

So instead, I borrowed an electric sander from a friend and have generally finished the first chair - it probably took 2 hours total. I went through a lot more paper than I expected and even the electric sander took some patience. I've now decided that the arms will be painted black so, although I will sand into the tight corners by hand, I've just been aiming to get the varnish off and have stopped worrying about getting all of the colored stain underneath off. That is the upside of painted arms!

For lovers of these types of chairs, before you shoot me, the wood is just old pine...I'm not defacing a collectors item with black paint, I promise!

I just made a cute cushion for my little sis- she has a red couch and generally has a red decorating crush going on at the moment. The fantastic fabric is hand printed by Thea and Sami. Will be using these fabrics again. Very nice.

It seems like heaps of people are giving retro chairs a whole new lease on life...so I thought I would give it a go.

As the hugely talented girls from flourish and bloom explain in this post:http://flourishandblume.blogspot.com.au/2011/08/diy-your-mouldy-old-chairs.html, retro TV chairs provide a satisfying DIY project with just some basic sewing skills and some patience with the sanding back of the frame. Typically, these chairs are super comfortable and don't take up as much space as a traditional armchair- handy for any townhouse or apartment dwellers.

I tried (and lost) a few bidding wars on eBay. Geez, you can tell that something is suddenly trendy when moldy old chairs are jumping rapidly in cost during the last few minutes of an auction! After getting over my frustration- and noticing that the professionally refurbished chairs were going for around $500 on eBay- I found my own special pair of chairs at my local lifeline. $45 for the pair was the perfect price for me.

Anna Maria has done a great job with this book: it is full of easy to complete projects that I hadn't seen in other books and many of them immediately jumped out as perfect gifts for different friends and family. Best of all, this took a short afternoon to complete. Did I mention it was my first burl at patchwork?

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Anyone who has taken charge of decorating a spec knows what a difference the "stuff" on your walls can make. Recently, I took a beautiful print from home into my work office, leaving a corner bare.

To spruce up the space, at least just for a while, I have grabbed some of our old racing bibs, old sports photos and some tickets to sports events that we went to while living in the US.

I like it because it is one space that reflects both of us (not just my tastes - whoops!). Also, it is made of tangible items that mean something to both of us: our tickets that we held when we went to our first NBA game (on Christmas day: our first Xmas without our families around), the passes to the local baseball match just before we moved home (and the all you can drink tickets that went with them!), and the race bibs I wore in my first road race and first half marathon. Best of all, I already had the stuff lying round in boxes, so it was free!

Monday, January 16, 2012

I've been testing out some ideas for glass pendants for necklaces. Similar to the "oh so popular" scrabble tile pendants, these involve sticking your paper to the back of a polished glass tile and then waterproofing the whole thing.

I got this kit from KristenKrafts on Etsy.com and used a bit of an old map. This one was a present for my brothers girlfriend. Yes, she's Swedish! My lucky brother :)